The Runner, 2026.
Directed by Kevin Macdonald.
Starring Gal Gadot, Damian Lewis, Noah Wilmot, Phoenix Di Sebastiani, Alfred Enoch, Hélder Fernandes, and Kenton Lloyd Morgan.
SYNOPSIS:
A high-powered attorney must race through London to save her abducted son while following cryptic commands from a mysterious caller.
Addressing the obvious about Kevin Macdonald’s quasi-real-time thriller The Runner, Gal Gadot isn’t a particularly convincing talent, even when given something as basic as conveying concern and rage that her son has been kidnapped, with his life being used against her as blackmail. The one bit of good news is that some of her performance is about the physicality of, well, running (sometimes jogging trying to pace herself) and listening to orders from an unknown caller (appearance shrouded in darkness when briefly glimpsed at a computer screen cave, played by Damian Lewis) in control of the situation, commanding her where to go and which route to take while hacked inside her phone.
That part, Gal Gadot is capable of selling, but with frantic editing cutting up her long trek across London, sometimes with the occasional visual flourish from cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle (strangely enough, some similar techniques seen in his work alongside Danny Boyle on 28 Years Later are here, stressing how arduous and draining this is on the body). The drawback is that the geography of any of this rarely makes much sense (it might not even for locals familiar with the area), especially as the contrivances pile up to shove obstacle after obstacle in front of our hero.
From a flimsy, bare-bones screenplay by Mark Gibson, Gal Gadot is attorney Maia, forced into rushing across the city to access a high-priority witness (Phoenix Di Sebastiani) in a sexual assault/murder case, essentially to kill him before he is transferred to the courthouse and able to deliver that testimony, which would spell doom for the client of Damian Lewis’s hacker caller. One would presume that would be the extent of the story, except the filmmakers routinely use downtime and nearly every conversation for that caller to fill out Maia’s backstory, alongside a number of other clunky elements.
This is also intended to hammer home an anti-phones-and-technology message that, while agreeable, is too blunt and unoriginal. At one point, the caller exclaims that he knows Maia better than she knows herself, which naturally isn’t true, but given that almost every personal detail about her life is somewhere within that phone, he has more than enough information to use as leverage. Everything from a history of her traumatic upbringing, running accolades, details about her job, daily routines, motherhood duties, how the child was conceived, and some extremely PG-13 lewds (amusingly convenient for maintaining that rating) sent to an equally convenient romantic interest is there, waiting to be manipulated to his advantage.
Maia is also certainly resourceful, but it always comes across as merely resourceful to what the film will allow rather than what fits the character. She smartly maneuvers her way toward larger crowds to swipe away another phone (something she attempts repeatedly) to contact someone for help, but almost every time, it’s all for naught, sometimes interrupted by the most clichéd stupidity, such as falling down and dropping the phone into a nearby canal. It’s movie-character stupidity.
Then there are moments when the film either doesn’t trust the premise or is aware it might not be enough, even for a film that runs only 75 minutes without credits, scripting Maia into more heightened and dangerous situations aboard trains, bridges, and boats. Not only is it a bit ridiculous, but it also muddles the geography to the point where, even with the occasional full-screen GPS glimpse, it’s difficult to tell where she is relative to her destination. Worse, at a certain point, we stop caring.
The Runner is also a film one can’t help but feel is headed toward some sort of ludicrous reveal in the finale, although not sure specifically what. However, the extent to which the film actually cheats to achieve that is quite insulting, and it doesn’t even lead to a satisfying climax. Absolutely nothing about the villain and the trial case matters, with Maia herself also a bundle of tropes. It’s as if this film is designed to highlight all of Gal Gadot’s weaknesses as an actor, even if there are a couple of moments when the physicality of her performance is impressive enough, although nowhere near enough to make Tom Cruise proud. Yes, there is much running here, not to be confused with momentum.
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Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Robert Kojder
